


something without warning

by intothenowhere (orphan_account)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, F/M, Fluff, Idiots in Love, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 19:08:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19836664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/intothenowhere
Summary: You’re my roommate who’s super cute and it’s the middle of the night and you’re cramming for your exams in your flannel pajamas and disheveled hair and it’s becoming increasingly hard for me not to kiss you.An Arcmaiden Roommate AU





	something without warning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [naberiie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/naberiie/gifts).



> I haven't written nearly enough of these nerds, and hopefully I can make up for that soon enough. I had a lot of fun writing this, and it's been sitting in my docs entirely too long.
> 
> Title is from lovely day by Alt-J which is a really 👌🏻 Arcmaiden song if I say so myself.

The door opened at half past nine pm, and Fives promptly dropped everything in his arms because the absolute least Echo could've done was warn him that the tutor he'd recommended for Fives in Art History was —

Beautiful didn't do Rabé Bhutia justice, Fives decided then and there. Not the way her tawny skin seemed to radiate warmth and love like the rising of a sunset, or the neat way her dark hair was tugged up into twin buns that left him stupefied on if she'd done it herself and if so  _ how,  _ or the way her cheeks were flecked with freckles that reminded him of constellations —

"You're Fives?" Rabé asks, a humorous edge to her tone, like the sight of Fives clutching graded and ungraded papers alike to his chest to try and halt their descent to the floor amused her to no end. 

"Y—yeah?" He hadn't meant it to sound like a question, like he wasn't  _ sure  _ if his name was really Fives, but it's how his abruptly dry mouth decided to voice the reply, testing his own patience. He squeezed his eyes shut, and tried again, "Yeah, I'm Fives. You're — you're the tutor my brother suggested, then?"

"Any other reason a stranger would wind up in your bedroom?" Rabé replies lightly, shrugging a messenger bag off her shoulders. It was peach colored, with a floral print of a plant Fives couldn't immediately name. 

Fives' mind stuttered to a stop for a moment wondering if she'd like him to answer that question, but thankfully she spared him the misery by continuing, "I'm Rabé, by the way."

She extended her hand to him, and it took Fives a minute to catch on before reaching out to shake it, dropping more papers in the process. At first, he nearly swore but then something magical happened: Rabé  _ smiled.  _

And Fives found he was smiling, too. 

* * *

  
“It's  _ not  _ a date," Fives admonished his brothers, moving to grab a throw pillow from the couch they scrounged from a dumpster some six months ago, and hurls it at Hardcase's head who moves fast enough to evade it so it smacks Echo full on. “She just wants to meet me at the ‘79s for a pint.”

“Does that not sound like a date?" Hardcase asks, looking round at Echo with the expression of a philosopher considering the meaning of life. "Echo, if I were to look at a dictionary —"

"You don't own a dictionary."

"And look at the word  _ date,  _ would it not define it as a private meeting between mutually interested parties, usually involving somewhere with a romantic atmosphere?"

Echo gives a long-suffering sigh of a sibling drug into an argument they'd rather not be in, "More or less."

"Aha!" Hardcase snaps his fingers, jabbing a triumphant finger at Fives who promptly smacks it away. "It's a  _ date,  _ I'm telling you, Fives."

Fives rolls his eyes exaggeratedly, grabbing his leather jacket to throw on. Fall had made its presence known quick at Theed University, and it was a long walk across campus to the ‘79 — one Fives wasn't looking forward to, not only because of the unfavorable weather, but there was a curl of pitiful blossoming hope in his gut that perhaps Hardcase was right _ ,  _ and Rabé had asked him on a date.

As predicted, the question haunted him with every step, repeating like a broken record only he could hear. He'd more or less convinced himself it wasn't a date by the time he tugged the door open at the ‘79s, and stepped inside.

It was dimly lit, and more or less empty on a Thursday night, but he saw some regulars here and there — Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Naberrie were huddled in a back booth, sharing a drink and laughing amongst themselves. The sight made Fives' heart ache for some reason, but he promptly forgot about them when his eyes finally landed on Rabé. 

Fives stopped abruptly, breath catching in his throat. Rabé was sitting at the counter, comically short on the stools, her legs swinging back and forth as she sipped on a glass of water. Her hair was loose, framing her face in curls while twin strands were tugged to the back of her head, braided like a crown, and she had a pale pink floral dress with a sheer skirt, and a jean jacket thrown around her shoulders.

Like she sensed his presence (she probably did), Rabé twisted in her seat and lit up at the sight of him. It gave Fives the courage to cross the floor to her, sitting down on the stool next to her. 

"What'll be?" The man behind the bar asked tiredly. There were shadows under his eyes, and Fives wondered if he ever got any rest if he took the night shift. 

"A beer, for me." Fives requested, turning to Rabé.

"Tequila shot."

The man nodded, turning away. Fives raised an incredulous brow at her, and Rabé shrugged. "I can hold my liquor."

A few moments passed, filled only with the disruption of getting their drinks. At last, Rabé broke her silence after downing her shot: "I need a roommate."

Not for the first time in her presence, Fives' mind stuttered to a sluggish stop, then rewound itself, trying to grasp onto the words. "You need a roommate?"

Rabé nodded, a quick little jerk of her head that Fives initially wasn't entirely sure was real or a manifestation of his imagination. "Sabé is moving in with her girlfriend, and Eirtaé is heading to England for the summer to help her brother prepare for his move."

"Where's he going, then?"

"Here," Rabé says with a smile full of remembered history. "He's becoming a professor here at the University, if you can believe — which Eirtaé can't," Rabé adds. "But since I'm staying here, I was going to go apartment hunting and…"

She trails off, meaningfully or not Fives doesn't know, but his heart is thunderous in his chest, and his lips part to reply —

As a loud rumble of laughter drags Rabé's attention away as a group of five enter the bar. Fives follows her gaze to see, in this order: a man with tawny skin and a mop full of dark curls, a woman taller than any of them in an outfit so colorful it made his eyes hurt, and three shorter people behind them: a brunette clutching a book like it was a lifeline, a blue-haired person huddled up to a blonde woman shorter than her like she was their bodyguard. 

"Know em?" Fives asks, turning back ‘round to Rabé. 

She gives a shrug, "Not personally, I've seen the colorful one in art class before, and the curly haired one showed up once to escort her to lunch. But, you were saying?"

She looked so endearingly hopeful that it took Fives a minute to get his voice to work. "Yeah, I'll be your roommate."

* * *

  
“Why,” Fives asks himself for the millionth time, glaring at the pair of speakers Hardcase and Ari Veruna had dragged in, "does the annual New Year's party  _ have  _ to be held at our apartment?"

There was at least an hour left until everyone invited were to arrive, and Fives was hanging as closely to the balcony as he could. If need be, he could escort himself to the other side of the sliding doors and let everyone else do the partying. 

It wasn't that he disliked parties — in fact, Fives  _ loved  _ parties. What he did  _ not  _ love was Ari deciding his now annual New Year's party had to be held at Fives and Rabé's apartment. The idea of everyone they knew traipsing as they pleased through his home was not one he was in favor of.

"Because, Rabé wanted to hold it here, and you agreed." Eirtaé answers, appearing like a ghost beside Fives. He hadn't even  _ heard  _ her approach. 

“I was there,” Fives retorts. "But what I don't get is why Rabé agreed in the first place — our apartment isn't exactly gala sized."

Eirtaé pauses, "Well, more like Ari gave her the least convincing puppy eyes and it worked."

"Rabé's more stubborn than that," Fives protests. 

"He might have mentioned it a suit and tie only, and that her boyfriend would have to wear one, too. There was also something about our friend groups merging." Eirtaé continues, not looking at Fives.

"Rabé doesn't have a boyfriend, though." That he knew of. If she had, she hasn't mentioned him. Or brought him over. Did she have a boyfriend —?

"Yeah," Eirtaé replies, a little too smugly. "Your suit is on your bed. Best to get ready." And then she was gone, in the same manner she appeared. 

It takes Fives awhile to get his jaw unhinged from the floor. Rabé didn't like him. Why would she? 

Fives ducks into his room to get dressed, if anything to try and shake Eirtaé's words, and by the time he got done, he doesn't recognize himself in the mirror at all. It's the fanciest thing he's ever worn, and he can't help but think of Hardcase and his love of James Bond films as he looks into the mirror. Fives  _ looks  _ like he could be an international spy.

He heads back out to find a sea of guests had emerged, some more friends of Rabé (he spotted Yané and Saché, and further back Dormé and Typho), Padmé and Anakin, Obi-Wan, and even a younger girl who didn't look  _ old enough  _ for an Ari Veruna party.

Fives makes his rounds, says hello to the people he recognizes, and keeps to the outskirts after until he splits away to catch his breath on the balcony, Eirtaé's words ricocheting through his head. They fill him with a kind of adrenaline he's never known, his heart and stomach doing gymnastics. He knows he  _ likes  _ Rabé — she was beautiful, one of the smartest people he knew, badass, funny. She was a ray of sunshine, no matter how tough the battle, Fives knew he could make it through with her by his side.

Which sounded a lot like —

A sudden bellow of party goers' conversation hits him full on as the door opens, muffling as quickly as they came as the door slides shut. Fives turns around to see who'd stepped outside, and his breath catches.

It was Rabé, looking for all the world like a strip of sunlight in the pale moonlight. Her gown looks like a dream of lace and sheers, pale gold with flecks of ink that spills up around the top of the lace collar like embers. The arms of her dress are sheer, and drop into an almost tear shape around her wrists.

"What're you doing out here?" Rabé asks, stepping up toward him. She moves silently, despite the heels that were on her feet. Rabé could be as quiet as Eirtaé when she wanted, as Fives had learned many times during the course of their time living together.

"Fresh air," Fives explains, twisting the arms of his sleeves. "Some quiet."

"I don't think that's all," Rabé says softly, leaning against the railing like him, fixing him with a stare that seems to pierce his soul. "You don't have to tell me, but you can." 

Fives swallows, thinking about how his heart stutters around her, how she's always on his mind even when they're apart — how hope had bloomed in his chest when Eirtaé talked to him. “Eirtaé...mentioned something earlier, about the party...that you —" in the distance, he could hear the muffled sounds of their friends chanting as the count down grew shorter. “And it made me think, and I—”

His voice is lost to the shrill noise of fireworks shooting up into the sky, and then the world around them explodes in emerald light. Rabé's eyes widen in delight, and she reaches to grab his arm. She says something, lost to the celebration of another year, but it's like the rest of the world has fallen away as a singular truth slides into place like the last piece of a puzzle.

_ I love you, Rabé Bhutia.  _

* * *

  
"I love you," Rabé gasps as her eyes land on the box of pizza in Fives' hands. She all but drags him in, and Fives laughs despite the way his heart constricts.

"That hungry, huh?" Fives asks, sitting the pizza down on their coffee table. He picked it up on the way home from his shift at the coffee shop, a belated celebratory gift for Rabé: one of her paintings was supposed to be displayed at a local art gallery in the next month or so.

" _ Starving, _ " Rabé calls as he heads down the hall to change into pajamas. He drags on a pair of flannels, a gray tee shirt that didn't smell too bad, and heads back to the living room with a pile of textbooks and notebooks. 

Rabé was already curled up on the couch under her crochet blanket, a huge slice of pizza dangling from her mouth as she tries to get the remote to work. Fives grabs the pizza before she drops it, and they promptly switch, Rabé handing him the remote. 

"The batteries are dead. Again. We don't watch that much TV do we?" Rabé asks, jerking her slice at the TV accusingly. 

"We  _ don't _ , we just have a crabby remote." Fives answers, sliding the new batteries in place. He hands it back to her, curling up in the space between the couch and the coffee table to study.

"Exams?"

"Yeah, Professor Windu has a really hard one coming up." Fives replies, twisting to face Rabé to continue his answer, but falters at the strange expression on her face. Before he can question it though, she's closing the distance between them, pressing her lips to his for a few, short glorious seconds —

And then she wheels back, gripping onto her pizza like her life depends on it. "I should not have done that. Fives, I'm sorry, I should have asked —"

It takes Fives a minute to realize Rabé is freaking out, on account of his brain shortening out the second her soft lips touched his, but the second he can retain information again, he's shaking his head. "Wait, wait, Rabé — Rabé I  _ like  _ you. A lot." That sounded dumb, even to him. He tries again, "You don't have to apologise for the kiss. I liked it, and I'd… like for it to happen again if you wanted it to?"

Rabé's cautious smile turns into a full blown grin, "I think I'd like it to happen again, too. Just maybe after pizza," she adds as a second thought, bopping him on the nose with it, leaving a smear of grease. Fives laughs, shaking his head, reaching to get his own slice.

"After pizza," he agrees.


End file.
